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June 22— Much of the environmental progress the U.K. has achieved in the four decades since
it joined the European Union is in danger of being reversed if Britons vote to leave
the 28-nation bloc in this week's referendum, according to environmentalists and business
groups interviewed by Bloomberg BNA.

A “Brexit”—the term being used for a U.K. exit from the EU—also would mean the island-nation
could lose a significant source of renewable energy investment, as well as the chance
to shape future EU environmental policy, they said.

But some supporters of a June 23 vote to leave the EU claim environmental doomsday
scenarios are being overblown;
others say bloc-wide rules have actually hampered environmental progress in some cases
across Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

‘Stay' Rationale

“EU environmental legislation isn't perfect, but it has in several cases improved
environmental standards in the U.K., such as on water quality and air pollution,”
Nick Molho, executive director of the Aldersgate Group, an alliance of business leaders,
politicians and nonprofit organizations, told Bloomberg BNA June 22.

By putting in place environmental standards that apply across the EU's single market
and its 28 member states, its environmental policy “has created a level playing field
for businesses, reduced the cost of complying with regulations that would otherwise
be different from one country to another and provided a large export market for those
companies—such as British manufacturers of ultra-low emission cars—who develop goods
or services that can meet these standards,” said Molho.

Water quality at beaches today “is better than at any time in living memory,” Samuel
Lowe, trade campaigner at environmental activist group Friends of the Earth, told
Bloomberg BNA, citing statistics from the Environment Agency.

“On air quality this story is much the same,” he said. “Improvements in the U.K. were
only made following EU action” and “as a result, between 1970 and 2011 sulfur dioxide
emissions dropped by 94 percent.”

Before its implementation of the EU's Birds and Habitats directives, the U.K. was
losing its protected sites at a rate of 15 percent per year, but “now it is down
to 1 percent,”
said Lowe.

“If the U.K. exits the EU, we will lose the strongest legal protection for wildlife
and natural habitats,”
said Matthew Spencer, director of the think tank Green Alliance. “Unless U.K. enforcement
gets much stronger, Brexit [would] result in new development in areas of countryside
which were previously sacrosanct.”

‘Leave' Camp

But U.K. Energy Minister Andrea Leadsom, a member of the ruling Conservative government,
scoffed at the claims from some environmental groups.

“The fact is, we are world leaders in the development of new, low-carbon technologies,”
Leadsom said in a recent speech. “Not only that, but our low-emissions reductions
ambitions set out in our Climate Change Act … are world leading, certainly EU leading.
So let me be very clear. Absolutely none of this is threatened by the U.K. voting
to leave the EU. … Put simply, the lights will not go out. Bills will not go up and
decarbonization will not stall as a result of leaving the EU.”

Leadsom said leaving the EU could actually help the U.K.'s renewable energy policy
“by getting away from huge restrictions of EU state aid rules,” which forbid bloc
members from showing favoritism to their own companies at the expense of EU competitors.

She also said EU membership significantly raises the value-added tax on sales of solar
panels.

‘Very Clunky, Very Restrictive.'

“The problem with EU directives is they are very clunky, very restrictive,” Farming
Minister George Eustice, also part of the Conservative government, said in a recent
speech. “I have lawyers in my office rather than the scientists I’d like to have …
and it stifles innovation and prevents us from trying new ideas. …
This country is passionate about our environment and we can deliver better policy
with the support of the public.”

But Friends of the Earth's Lowe said some who want to leave the EU are “gathering
round the promise of victory parties lit by bonfires of environmental regulation,”
and claimed prominent advocates for Brexit are “one and the same as those who have
fought action on climate change.”

If the Brexit vote passes, then “the likelihood of us having an environmentally progressive
policy post-Brexit seems slim,” Lowe said.

Economic Considerations

The economic uncertainty created by Brexit also augurs badly for how a future government
could view environment rules, according to Spencer.

“There is a real risk that, faced with economic turbulence following Brexit, U.K.
domestic action on climate change, air pollution and chemical regulation will be weakened
in the name of competitiveness,” he said.

Nina Skorupska, chief executive of the industry lobby group the Renewable Energy Association,
told Bloomberg BNA: “The U.K. Climate Change Act is legal, but can be repealed by
any future government.”

U.K. Energy and Climate Change Secretary Amber Rudd, who is campaigning for the U.K.
to remain part of the continental bloc, has been vocal about the renewable energy
investment opportunities that the European Union provides Britain.

“Being in the EU helps us attract billions and billions of pounds of investment in
our energy system and supply chain,” Rudd said in a recent speech. “Does anybody really
think all of that investment would continue if we left the EU, and with no extra cost?”

According to Rudd, the U.K. wins a third of EU's renewable energy investment, and
major offshore wind developers like Denmark's Dong Energy's and Germany's Siemens
“certainly want us to stay in.”

EU Green Policies

Rudd also underlined how as part of a large trading bloc, the U.K. can help to “influence
the great geopolitical challenges of the day,” and cited the country's role in pushing
through the Paris Agreement on climate change last December.

“If we left the EU, with the U.K. responsible for just 1 percent of global emissions,
I doubt we would have even been in the room,” she said. “How do I know? Because I
was there in the room and many others weren't.”

Lowe said without EU membership, the U.K. “would have a much reduced ability to shape
EU rules and environmental standards, meaning that the environmental peculiarities
of the U.K. would get a much reduced hearing when future policy is created.”

And the Aldersgate Group's Molho said by leaving the EU, the U.K. would lose its ability
to steer many environmental and low-carbon economy decisions currently being debated
in Brussels, such as the circular economy package and the implementation of the Paris
climate change agreement in EU law.

In addition, with its upcoming presidency of the EU Council in 2017, “and with many
British businesses at the cutting edge of environmental innovation, the U.K. [if it
remains the EU] will have a unique opportunity to shape these upcoming decisions and
make EU environmental policy more effective in areas such as waste policy and more
ambitious in areas such as climate change,”
he said.

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